ticking off PIM boxes

Posted by openloop
Aug 5, 2021 at 10:51 PM

Hi,

Over the last 24 hours, I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to get a handle on the most appropriate software base for re-organizing my workflow.

I’m hoping you, the gentle reader, can point my attention in some useful directions.

Here are my considerations:

1)Ideally, I’d like the solution to combine
(a)an infinitely-nested outliner
(b) a mindmap whose contents automatically integrate with the outliner
(c) a light task-management function capable of being accessed and updated by others
(d) full-text search
(e) compilation of the results of full-text search into documents
(f) import and export of structured data (e.g., spreadsheets, child-of-child lists or mindmap nodes)

That’s probably pie-in-the-sky.

More realistically, I’m seeking
(a)an infinitely-nested outliner
(c) a light task-management function capable of being accessed and updated by others
(d) a mindmap whose contents integrate with the outliner

More realistically yet, I’m seeking
(a)an infinitely-nested outliner that can accessed across multiple devices, and that integrates with
(c) a light task-management function capable of being accessed and updated by others

Here are a few of the things I’ve looked at so far:

*Transno
—this is an elegant and snappy online outliner<—->mindmap system
—-the two modes are thoroughly (and wonderfully!) linked
—it has a nicely simple collaboration feature
—unfortunately, in importing other mindmaps/structured docs, it doesn’t access children-of-children, only children

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*MindVisualizer
—I love this mindmap app, and have been using it for years
—why do I love it? It’s very easy to use, very easy to look at, and does import/export unusually well
—-simply put, it’s a well-thought-out program
—unfortunately…
—-trying to use it as a text outliner is a bit cumbersome
—-it’s desktop-only, so synching is required across machines
—- more importantly, its task-management feature doesn’t extend to team access and editing

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*InfoQube
—looks very, very powerful—and free!
—doesn’t look all that easy on the eyes
—doesn’t seem to easily extend to team-management or access across systems
—-more importantly, it appears to have a time-consuming learning curve

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*Visual Understanding Environment
*ThinkComposer
—ambitious but aging systems that grade similarly to the still-alive InfoQube

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*InfoRapid KnowledgeBuilder
—this thing looks *really* powerful, and I’m drawn to the (rotating!) 3-d spatial visualization of its database
—I can’t get the thing to download and install via the Microsoft Store

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*TheBrain
—I trialed a version long, long ago
—the tiny nodes seemed remarkably inhospitable to long text docs
—the current versions don’t seem, at a glance, substantially better

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*Xmind
—I liked the free version, way back when
—the current version seems very visually polished, but not that much more powerful
—-not that useful for outlining and team-management

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*Obsidian+LogSeq
—it looks powerful, elegant, extensible, and to be in a process of rapid mutation
—markup hurts my eyeballs, so much so that I can’t imagine comfortably using this

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*JotNotes
—very elegant freeware infinitely-nesting outliner
—-desktop only
—-no mindmapping or team-tracking features

Any pointers on (a) what I should try next, or (b) how I should synch or otherwise link apps to get closer to the workflow I want?

Thank you :)